


Blue Eyes and Moth Wings

by lurkinglurkerwholurks



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Canon Compliant, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-09 07:48:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18633892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lurkinglurkerwholurks/pseuds/lurkinglurkerwholurks
Summary: The man’s face is everywhere, blue-eyed and tight-jawed. Like he’s ready to punch or be punched. The look’s the same, whether on a small, thin face, or a broad, muscled one. The faces make things flutter in the back of his skull, rustling like moth wings. He can’t tell how old those things are, if they come from a few days ago or a lifetime ago.





	Blue Eyes and Moth Wings

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is set immediately after _Captain America: The Winter Soldier_ but won't make sense unless you've seen _Avengers Endgame_. See end notes for more details.

He feels like he’s falling. He doesn’t remember, and what he does remember he tries to forget—what he does remember they burn out of him, but they can’t burn out the falling. His is a remorseless plunge, a relentless swoop that turns his stomach and leaves him clawing for leverage. The vertigo leaves him sick and shaking every time, though by now he’s learned to hide it, to shove the emotions and the weakness deep down where only he can feel it.

He compensates by leaving his mark, by pounding his feet into the earth with each landing, by leaving holes and wreckage and carnage in his wake. He never stops falling, but each impact drives a little feeling into his frozen bones. Each piece of havoc is a memory for someone else, a way for his path to be traced by others, like footprints in mud, after he’s passed through and forgotten again. 

His temples tingle, pricking in warning. He’s not going back, but if they find him, they’ll make him return. They’ll say the words that turn his muscles into soup and pour him into the chair to burn and the tube to freeze.

He won’t be found. Not this time.

He has obtained a ball cap and a jacket, both stolen from a corner store, the owners distracted by the news on TV and the choppers flying overhead. He is gone before they can acknowledge his presence.

He is a ghost. призрак. That is what they say on the news. A phantom from nightmares caught in the light of day. They say other things, too. He stands in the aisle of the market, watching the screen until the noise hurts his head. Or maybe it’s the images they show, echoes he flinches from without knowing why.

If he were smart, he’d leave the city. The skies are filled with the hum of eyes, and cameras glint in every corner. They look for him—all of them enemies, though they are a swirling mess of allegiances and motivations. If he were smart, he would disappear across the border, vanish into the thick jungles and fog.

But he is smarter than even that. Instead, he stays in the city. He follows the homeless and adrift, the addicting and the addicted, down into their little hidey holes. He tends to his injuries and sleeps sitting up, his back pressed to the cold concrete wall, his eyes open.

The search spreads outward like oil on water, seeking the trail of the ghost through airport terminals and train stations, bus stops and traffic cams. Those are the eyes of the ones who call him the ghost, призрак, and their eyes are weak, fractured by the virus that has been multiplying under their skin. The eyes of those who call him soldier, солдат, they are sharper. They think they know him. They think they know his patterns. But they have trained him too well, and he turns that knowledge against them like a stiletto.

_Like a snake doubling on itself_ , he promises himself. He will turn and he will strike. But for now, he hides. He waits.

Waiting does not mean standing still. He has given himself a new mission, a long-term assignment with long-lasting implications. He steals more clothes to replace the tactical gear still stiff and crunchy with blood. He finds a mobile station for the homeless and scrubs himself down in the makeshift shower, shivering and teeth clenched under the hard spray. He shuffles into the corner bodega late at night, head hung low and shoulders stooped, to buy food. The cameras do not catch his face, and the night clerk doesn’t bother to look either.

He is fed. He is dressed. He is clean. He is unobserved. Good.

When the museum opens, he is not there. He is on the rooftop across the street, tactical binoculars pressed to his face. There is security, but nothing alarming. There is no additional surveillance that he can tell, no unfriendly eyes looking back at him. Why would there be? They think he is gone, on a boat to Bogata or a plane to Pakistan.

He waits until just before closing, when the swell of the crowds push toward the doors rather than the exhibits and the staff are glassy-eyed and sore-footed. It is not hard to find what he seeks. The exhibit was the crown jewel of the collection before the attack, even more so now. He walks with a slow, unhurried pace, hands shoved deep into his jacket pockets. His shoulders do not twitch at the names that float through the air, blared by exhibit recordings and whispered by patrons.

The man’s face is everywhere, blue-eyed and tight-jawed. Like he’s ready to punch or be punched. The look’s the same, whether on a small, thin face, or a broad, muscled one. The faces make things flutter in the back of his skull, rustling like moth wings. He can’t tell how old those things are, if they come from a few days ago or a lifetime ago.

None of the faces look like the one he saw, its eye swelled shut, cheek split and broken, lip swollen, lashes wet. The face that doubled over itself, ghosting image on image. He wants to see that face again, to understand why it sent him tumbling into the dark, why the words it rasped sent him falling.

He stops when he sees the second face.

His lips part as the numbness prickles in his extremities. He knew what he would find, but the image still shocks him. The face is softer, maybe a little younger, but undeniably his.

_James Buchanan Barnes_.

The name means nothing, a cold, flat taste on his tongue. But his vertigo intensifies.

His mouth closes, jaw tightens. He will make them pay for what they have done.

He examines the rest of the exhibit, enhanced memory cataloging every detail. He finds a video of _James Buchanan Barnes_ standing next to _Steven Grant Rogers_. They are laughing, the familiar eyes creasing at the corners in unfamiliar ways. He forces himself not to rub his own mouth. He has no muscle memory for that expression.

The vertigo continues apace. By the time the museum disgorges him onto the sidewalk, his hand is shaking in his pocket.

Falling

falling

falling . . .

He loses time. When he comes to himself again, he is sitting on a bench on a pavilion overlooking a river.

The sun is setting.

There are ducks quacking.

A man sits one bench over, an easel erected in front of him and a palette of paint balanced on one knee.

His tendons tense, but the man seems little threat. Though broad-shouldered, his musculature has been whittled and withered by age. His shoulders are slightly stooped as he reaches forward with one hand and drags a brush across the canvas.

The man must feel his gaze, because he glances aside and smiles. “Evenin’.”

The man’s hair is full and white with faded strands of gold still clinging amid the snowy strands, and his eyes are blue.

He should be uneasy, staring full into the face of another person. It is incompatible with remaining unnoticed. But there’s something about the greeting, about the smile, about the quacking of the ducks on the golden water that slows his pulse.

“You look like you’ve had a hell of a day,” the man is saying. He’s not staring now, attention back on his canvas, but his gaze flits over from time to time as he speaks.

_Understatement of the century_. He should know. He’s _lived_ most of the century, even if he can’t remember it.

“I got some pastrami on rye in my bag here.” The man’s eyes flick to the brown paper bag sitting on the bench next to him. “Was supposed to be my dinner, but I’m not in the mood. If I leave it, you maybe think about eatin’ it for me? I hate the thought of wastin’ it.”

His stomach answers for him, grumbling loudly at the thought of food that wasn’t convenience store jerky.

The man smiles. His movements as he packs up his paints are a little slow but smooth, hands always visible.

He appreciates that. He is still too dazed from the museum.

“Gotta head home,” the man is saying, his voice easy and conversational. “My wife’s in care and visiting hours start early. I don’t sleep as well as I used to.”

And that’s all there is. The man gives him one last crinkle-eyed smile, tucks his supplies under his arm, and leaves.

He checks the paper bag for traps and, finding none, eats the pastrami on rye. The vertigo eases some.

He manages two more days in his hideaway before the cops sweep through to collect the occupants. Those who can scatter do, feet kicking empty bottles and discarded needles as they flee. The rest are gathered up into the arms of the law.

He is in the former group, though his stomping feet kick aside nothing and no one. For once, he does not want to be remembered. He buys his way into a dumpy little motel, the building too ashamed to light up its own sign. The next afternoon, a suspicious van drives by twice in one hour. He leaves the motel, unwilling to take the risk.

Next is the shadowed underside of an overpass. He chooses not to run off the other inhabitants, reasoning that five huddled shapes under a bridge make him less of a target than one. That night, the skies open with a crash and pour down white sheets of rain. The water makes him shiver, but he can bear it. He’s suffered worse. It’s the noise that drives him out and away, the roar of thunder that makes his vision blur as his brain scrambles for a threat assessment.

He ends up in a bus station for the shelter and falls asleep on a bench. A worker ushers him along at dawn.

He is hungry. He is tired. He needs another shower and clean, dry clothes. He needs to leave this city, but it’s not time yet. More knowledge waits in other museums, in other archives. He has monsters to hunt as well.

In the end, it is not what he does that causes trouble, but who he is. An operative finds him. It’s pure luck, wrong place wrong time, the universe thumbing its nose at him. The nose-thumbing is deliberate, because it’s not an asset like him, muscle-bound and strong, but a true operative. A desk jockey with frameless glasses and a blazer. They’re the worst, because they’re smart.

This one proves it by rattling off the first two code words before he can take more than a step toward her. It’s like lightning in his bones, freezing his muscles and locking his joints in place. He strains against his programming, the tendons on his neck bulging. He will not be taken again. Not again. Never again.

He is falling

falling

falling . . .

The back alley echoes with the clang of metal on bone.

He opens eyes he doesn’t remember closing and stares. The operative lies crumpled on the ground. Over her body stands the old man from the bench, wrinkled hands still holding a dented trash can lid aloft. The man is panting heavily, eyes on the operative, but then he lifts his gaze.

“I heard a shout,” the man says simply, as if running toward trouble is something anyone would do. “Looked like you could use a hand.”

He doesn’t remember shouting. Doesn’t remember anything, the thoughts leaking out of his head like water from a pulled drain. But he remembers. He remembers this man. A painting of still waters and pastrami on rye.

He draws in a deep breath, lets it out slowly. The man nods as if he’s done something right, then lowers the trash can lid and starts patting his pockets absently.

“You, uh, you wouldn’t happen to have any restraints on you, would you?” The man nudges the operative with the toe of his tennis shoe. “I’d rather not leave this one walking around.”

He does. He tosses the man one from inside his jacket pocket. He could take this man, this elderly person who is still panting softly from exertion, but he still prefers to stay out of arm’s reach.

The man catches the tie and bends to bind the woman. Only when the man grunts as he leans the operative against the wall does he step forward, stooping to help. And there they are again, eye to eye, the first and now second person to look him square in the face. There is the crinkle-eyed smile again.

“If, uh, you need a place to hunker down, I got one you can use.” The man has straightened again, so he does as well, stepping away and out of reach. “It’s a quiet little place. Spare bedroom, good security, not a lot of visitors since my wife… It’s a good spot for R&R.”

He is already shaking his head. It is a kind offer. He realizes this. But he’s looking again at the operative on the ground, feeling the concrete that had poured into his veins as she spoke the words. Others will come. They will have the commands. He can imagine them shooting this man, this painter with the kind, blue eyes, for no more than trying to help.

“Security’s good,” the man repeats firmly, as if the words should mean more than they do. “My wife’s a stickler for that kind of thing.”

The gold ring glints off the man’s hand as he reaches into the collar of his shirt. There’s a soft, clinking noise that he recognizes even before the man pulls the dog tags free.

“Besides. You’re a vet, right? Us old dogs have to stick together.”

The tags glint in the afternoon light, then disappear back into the collar before he can read the name.

He looks again at the operative. There will be more. So many more. But if he can stay free in the city for a few more days, then he can leave. He can go hunting, bring danger to their doorsteps and away from this man’s. He needs a shower. He needs real sleep. He needs pastrami on rye.

He nods once, his head deciding before his mouth can make up its mind.

The man smiles, a true smile with straight, white teeth. The moths flutter restlessly in the back of his skull.

“I’ll call this in on the way,” the man says, jerking his thumb at the operative. “Car’s just around the corner.”

They are almost to the car, an old-fashioned hatchback, when he makes his mouth move.

“What’s your name?” His voice is croaking from days of silence. He doesn’t want to ask, worried about a return question, but the lack of intel makes his veins jitter.

The man looks back at him over his shoulder. Not up, he notices. Even with the stoop of old age, they are the same height. 

The blue eyes crinkle again, though he thinks there is something sad lurking in the corners now. “For now, just call me Carter.”

**Author's Note:**

> Endgame made me feel so many things that I had to make this solo foray out of my chosen fic fandom in order to, as they say on Quantum Leap, put right what once went wrong. Though not canon-explicit, it _is_ canon compliant that after making his choice, Steve could then appear within his own timeline.
> 
> Fact: Bucky did not look surprised by the lake. Not once. Not ever.
> 
> Fact: We don't know the totality of what Bucky was up to between disappearing at the end of Winter Soldier and reappearing in Romania at the beginning of Civil War.
> 
> Fact: Bucky and Steve are canon-confirmed to have multiple conversations between Civil War and Endgame. Plenty of time for Bucky to tell Steve what he was up to.
> 
> Fact: Steve's entire arc has been about his relationship with Bucky, no matter how you define said relationship.
> 
> Fact: Steve sucks at inaction.
> 
> So here we are.


End file.
